Beyond Transplants: Growing Organs in the Lab

BREAKTHROUGH AWARDS 2006: Innovators Anthony Atala and Alan Retik

Growing replacement organs has been one of the "maybe someday" fantasies of doctors for a generation. Gone would be long waiting lists for transplants -- along with complications arising from tissue rejection. In 2006, medical researchers led by Anthony Atala and Alan Retik announced that they had largely regrown bladders using their patients' own cells, then implanted them. Science fiction had become fact.

Surgeons typically repair disease-damaged bladders using intestinal tissue from a patient's own body, but the procedure often leads to complications, and even cancer. "What really bothered me was seeing the practice done in children, who would be plagued by problems throughout their lives," says Atala, director of the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Doctors led by Retik, chief of urology at the Children's Hospital in Boston, took bladder biopsies from patients. The urothelial cells of the inner layer were separated from cells of the outer layer of muscle, and cultured. Then, researchers plaited the cells onto a spongelike biodegradable scaffold, made of a synthetic polymer and collagen, in the shape of a bladder. After a seven-week incubation period, surgeons grafted the new bladder/scaffold segments onto the patients' damaged bladders. All seven patients improved -- and are continuing to thrive.

Atala's research team at Wake Forest is now growing 20 different tissues, including heart patches, pancreatic insulin-producing tissue and kidney tissue. The researchers still have much to learn, but hopes remain high. They recently received funding from the Department of Defense for work that could one day lead to regenerated limbs for injured soldiers.